


First Contact

by Cupcakemolotov



Series: come alive [24]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alien!Klaus, Alterante Universe - Aliens, Dark Klaus Mikaelson, Dark fic, F/M, Genocide, Horror, Human!Caroline, Kidnapping, Possessive Klaus Mikaelson, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-04-24 00:48:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14344464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cupcakemolotov/pseuds/Cupcakemolotov
Summary: First contact came with what earth thought was their saving grace. Instead, it was their death. But not for everyone.





	1. Chapter 1

Caroline remembered their first contact.

She'd holed up in a bunker with her sick mom, watching the news as these strange, human-like beings were greeted by a special team. Her dad was part of that team, and her mouth was dry as dust, watching him shake hands with the stiff looking man. Caroline had been a little disappointed, that they seemed so normal. Tall, thin, dark hair and eyes. Mostly human features.  
They spoke with clipped, slightly strange accents, but overall, they seemed like friendly aliens.

Six years later, and she was regretting those years of relief. Shifting to a slightly better position, she kept her grip on her gun firm and not white knuckled in panic only through years of practice. Sweat dripped down her spine, a mixture of the fever she'd been fighting for the last three days and the adrenaline that was coursing through her veins.

Caroline knew Klaus somewhere nearby, hunting her. What was left of the base was a hollow silence, and she cursed that the ringing in her ears was so loud. Careful, bare toes nearly silent on the concrete, she kept her pace slow as she moved with the wall at her back.

When her mom had died, she'd joined her dad and followed him from base to base, staying as far away from the aliens as she could while he studied and played intermediate for them. Caroline was too big of a target for anti-alien groups to be allowed the normal college experience, so she juggled her language and communication program online. Bill was proud, thinking that she wanted to follow in his footsteps, but that wasn't the future Caroline wanted.

She'd never been able to put a finger on what it was about these pale, dark eyed men who roamed the hallways that left her uneasy. The few times she'd been forced to interact with them they'd been polite, and strangely intent while they spoke to her.

Then the alien's leadership had shown up. Caroline had gleaned the the aliens didn't think of leaders the way humanity did, and she was pretty sure the concepts of democracy had amused them. Like watching children play with toy soldiers.

Their leader had broken the mold of every alien they'd met before. A head of riotous curls, dimples that captivated millions, and an innate magnetism that drew diplomats to him like a moth. He'd even taken a human name, Klaus. He'd brought with him those he'd referred to as his family, a woman with hair as blond as Caroline's own, and a man of dark hair and eyes whose smile devoured.

Even in the privacy of her mind, she'd been wary to name them as her gut had warned. A hunting party. Her proud father had introduced her with his beaming smile, and Caroline couldn't have named what it was about Klaus' smile, the blue of his eyes, that left her so disconcerted.

For next two years, Klaus had walked in and out of her life. At first, it had seemed innocent enough. The occasional question for clarification. A random meeting in hallways. But slowly, she'd started to feel like she was being circled by a predator searching for a weakness. Caroline had put effort into changing up her schedule, for making random decisions that weren't so predictable, but nothing she'd done had shaken him.

It'd alarmed her, how easily he could pull her into a conversation that could swallow the time, until she realized she was late for a meeting. Or how distracting his hands could be, when Klaus was sketching out some detail the scientists wanted about this cluster of that system. Sometimes, she'd find herself absorbed by the sound of his voice, the slightly cajoling tone he used as he drew out the curiosity she'd done her best to bury.

Worse was how he'd started popping into her dreams. Caroline was no stranger to fantasizing, her sex life was super limited thanks to her dad. There was no denying that Klaus was easy on the eyes, but it was the way he looked at her those mornings after, a glint behind his gaze and just a hint of something barely contained, that sent her pulse skipping.

A week ago, she'd accepted a position away from Bill, away from the more active parts of the alien culture immersion project. A chance to take a breather, to live a life not surrounded by soldiers, her every word recorded and stored for analyzing. A chance to follow the dreams she'd promised her mom she couldn't forget.

She hadn't told Klaus she was leaving.

Then the day she was supposed to take transportation off base, everything had gone to hell. One of the scientists had gotten sick. By noon, the entire team was down. It had moved too quickly, personal all too slowly, to quarantine it. Flights had been grounded, personal denied access to leave.

Caroline had sat alone in her room, watching news on her laptop as reports of the virus had broken out across the globe, so many people falling sick. But it had been a single screenshot of Klaus, at the alien consulate in Paris, smiling in the background of a picture that had turned her blood to ice.

It looked like an invasion after all.

An hour later, and the base had gone dark. Yesterday, people had started to disappear. Caroline had been careful not avoid humans and aliens alike, sneaking through the halls and vents she knew so well. It worked in her favor that the base was dark as she skulked around for supplies.

That morning, she'd woken from her hiding place, sweating and shivering, knowing that Klaus had returned. She'd been overly careful, avoiding softly echoing voices, but the fever had only gotten worse. Shivering, she pressed into a corner in the mess hall, listened to the ghosts in her ears and tried to focus.

"You know sweetheart, you've been giving my men fits. I admire your determination but what do you hope to accomplish?"

Caroline set her teeth as Klaus stepped out of the shadows. He'd discarded the perfectly fitted suits she was used to seeing him in. Instead, the fabric absorbed the light in a way she'd never seen, and it looked ridiculously soft to the touch.

"What have you done with everyone else?"

His smile was too white in the dark, and maybe it was her fever, but his canines looked sharp. She shuddered when she looked back at his eyes, at the black veins that ran into his eyes. "The ones who survive the fever will be collected in due time."

She wasn't entirely conscious of pulling the hammer of her pistol, but he stopped moving at the sound. His smile widened, and the dimples just emphasized the blade of his mouth. "I will shoot you."

"But what's the point?" He questioned. "My people have been here for six years, love. We've sown the seeds of our disease into your water, into your very earth. You carry it in your veins, and it's burning you up from the inside out. When you survive it, you'll no longer be quite what you are now."

"So this was an invasion."

Another step. "Of course it was. My people need resources, and humanity is a renewable one. You have been for generations. Did you imagine your Egyptian Pyramids and your Nazca Lines were anything but a map?"

Caroline kept her gun stubbornly leveled. "A map for what?"

His face changed, sudden fangs leaving her dizzy. Their was nothing humane in his eyes now, just an endless pit that threatened to swallow her whole. "Food, love. The same reason we came before, the reason we'll come again. Earth is the perfect breeding ground, and we've come for our harvest."

Her breath hitched into her lungs, and his next step brought the barrel of her gun directly into his chest. She shook her head, knees locking to fight the way the room swayed. "No. No you can't…"

Klaus pushed the gun aside and swept her off her feet. She struggled for a moment, and Klaus made a low shushing sound, plucking the gun from her fingers. "Don't fret so, sweetheart. Do you think I'd let your fate be the same as your species? You with your intelligence, your curiosity?"

Caroline struggled to stay coherent as he walked, brain scrambling uselessly for an escape. Exhaustion was heavy in her bones and the steady heartbeat under her ear was hypnotic. "I'm human."

What might have been a kiss was pressed lightly to the crown of her hair. "You were. Shall I tell you of your new homeworld? What you're becoming?"

She tried to fight the pull of his voice, but it dragged her under as he described her his people, the world he lived in. Caroline slipped into an inky blackness with his promise following her down into the spiral. _You'll make a magnificent predator._


	2. The Drowning Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, here is a tiny follow up that I’ve been poking back and forth forever since I promise @thetourguidebarbie that’d I’d try. Fair warning, it probably won’t get a third part unless I can decide how to make it a happy ending. This is not necessarily a happy follow up, and it’s why more angsts than I prefer TBH, but the first bit was horror and this sort of follows that. So, warnings: angst, some horror, not really a happy ending but hopefully the tiny start of a hopeful one.

Caroline sat quietly at the window the looked across the universe as it slowly slipped by. The glittering stars and the glimmering ships that moved like an oil slick in the dark. Today she could see glints of red and blue where hours and hours and hours ago she could only see the darkness. The shadows of planets that lived beneath suns colored shades of unbelievable golds and reds.

Her skin still felt too hot. Too tight. Bones stretching beneath her skin as she sweated her humanity away the way she’d break a fever. As if this new disease that ravaged her body was distilling her down to bones and the blood she craved, the blood that often slipped between her lips, her delirium as sweet as wine. It slowly built her on a different foundation that humanity only lent its shape to. Sire bond, she’d heard whispered in the halls, harsh words that drew muscles taut and rigid beneath her hands as she fought to live.

But they were wrong.

This monster who’d slipped like a shadow through her world and sewn salt and ruin in the civilizations she’d loved; he wanted. She read it in his eyes as she sweltered in his bed, hungry and angry. She felt as she peered at a universe that unraveled a secret a little more each moment. His cravings for her had always been an open secret but now she could taste them.

Not once had she been tempted to reach for those promises or to feel them beneath the heat of her palms. She feasted on them beneath her new teeth, tasted them on the tip of her bloody tongue, but her skin didn’t ache for the feel of his hands. Her bones and sinew didn’t crave what he would have offered her should she lift a single hand in his direction. A sire bond would have dragged her beneath the waves of his desires and left her to drown.

The feral curve of his lips, the glint of canine and the predator beneath his skin hunted and memorized and absorbed, but it didn’t pull her under the the endless depth of his greed. Not yet, he’d whispered against her skin as she shivered and raged. _Hate me if you must; if that’s all you’ll offer me. We have time._

She hated that too.

That this monster who had come in sheep’s clothing and peered at her people from a Trojan horse, he read her so easily. He’d made her into the sun that he orbited like a bloody promise. Not because she was breakable, but because she was a fascination. He’d seen something inside her those years he’d been a wolf disguised as a helping hand and he’d plucked her from ruin. She’d fought and fought, and his will had been an iron wall she’d gouged her fingers bloody against.

In the end, Caroline wanted to live.

She wanted to stretch and swallow and rage. More she wanted the freedom that had been so close, and stolen just as easily. But not once had she wanted to die with her people. Not once had she wished for the cold grave that would have marked her life on earth or the pile of sun bleached bones that she would have left behind. Instead, fingertips pressed against the strange window that showed her a little more color, a little more frigid finality everyday, she wanted more.

_Come to bed._

But not him. Not Klaus. Not yet. Caroline worried that she could come to want him, this beautiful nightmare that had stolen her humanity and her world. He offered her galaxies as easily as diamonds, chased her fever dreams with soothing words and cajoling stories. Charmed as easily as he destroyed. He didn’t ridicule her hatred, didn’t diminish her rage as childish, but absorbed them all as badly offered gifts.

As this ship raced towards an empire her human brain had scrambled to comprehend, a strange, inexplicable want sat in her bones and marrow and pshe pulsed with a fevered hunger she felt like an ache. Human Caroline disappeared a little more each day, burned away from the greed his blood and sickness had awoken in her blood, and what would crawl out of the cocoon of her old flesh was a mystery.

But she could see the possibilities in red lips and dimples, she felt them as he lay pressed against her spine. Klaus’ blood and touch anchored her fragile mind, kept her from splintering into a thousand screams. His rooms weren’t safe and they weren’t kind, but they were familiar in a time when her body reforged itself.

She hated him.

She _wanted_ to hate him.

Cold seeping into her palm, and Caroline watched the universe pass by her in waves. She knew soon enough he’d come and fetch her, tuck her cold feet between his calves and count her breaths. He’d continue this strange intimacy as she felt his blood corrupt her cells one at a time, twisting the very foundations of her lungs. One day soon, there would be only what he left in her veins. Hunger and greed. Thirst. _Such_ a thirst.

All she had to do now was decide what to do with it.


End file.
